Chapter Text
I don’t think Bruin even knew I was awake the first time he broke into my house in Victor's Village for somewhere to sleep. It was deep into the worst part of the night when I heard the front door opening. I hadn’t planned on leaving my little makeshift painting studio full of half-covered canvases and cups of black water until morning, so every other room in my house was as dark as the rest of District 12.
It might have been better to set up my easels in the parlor with its floor to ceiling windows, but I don’t know if I could make it until morning without the fireplace beside me. The whole house has electric lights, but they don’t feel like company the way the fire does.
My heart stood still when I heard the sound of footsteps down the hall. Any number of people in District 12 would be hungry enough to risk facing the peacekeepers for a chance to swipe a handful of coins from my coat pockets.
As the footsteps grew louder, I grew more quiet. They could take what they liked. The prospect of leaving the only lit room in the house bothered me much more than the idea of someone pawning my silverware.
When the sun finally rose, I wiped the paint from my fingers and opened the door. My oldest brother was there, slumped in the doorway to an unused bedroom.
His dirty blonde hair stood out at strange angles, as though he had been grabbing at it, and he smelled like Haymitch. His thick wool sweater was soaked through, leaving little puddles of muddy water under his wrists. I got him a bucket and covered him with one of the coats Portia sent me when the weather started to change. He didn’t stir when I tucked the soft fabric around his shoulders.
That was months ago. Since then, he has shown up a handful of times, always late in the night. But today, I’m surprised to see him slumped on a couch when I turn on the kitchen lights because he knows I have plans to visit the bakery after breakfast to say goodbye.
It's been a long time since I officially worked there, but I still haven’t broken the habit of baking bread every morning. It took me a few weeks to fully get used to using an electric oven. It’s a lot less finicky than the one at the bakery, and much smaller.
I push the kitchen curtains aside to watch the sun rise and cut a slice of yesterday’s bread to eat while I work. When I first got back, I used to walk the quarter mile home every morning. My parents hired a boy to help out in the kitchen while I was gone. There was more than enough work for all six of us with the camera crews still in town, and for about a week we got on that way. But I could feel their eyes on me when they thought I wasn’t looking. I could hear all their unspoken questions. I felt like a ghost, lingering in a place where I no longer belonged.
“Old habits die hard?”
I turn around. Bruin pulls a chair out and sits at the kitchen table, his face a little pale. He looks like he hasn’t had a good meal in a while.
I pause my kneading to cut him a slice of bread and smear on a thick layer of goat cheese. “What happened to you?”
“Got held up going home. When I realized they would already be awake…”
He closes his eyes with a long sigh and ducks his head to rub at his temples. I understand. My mother would be hard to face at four in the morning. For several long minutes, he plays with the slice of bread, pulling it apart into pieces. “When do you leave?”
The rhythm of kneading dough against the counter grows noticeably harsher, punctuating my words. “They’re coming at noon.”
“At least you get a break from this place,” Bruin mutters.
“Yeah.” I still my hands and the dough stares back at me. I dump it into a bowl, cover it with a towel, and shove it in the drawer under the oven to proof. It won’t feel like an escape. That’s what my brother doesn’t understand. It doesn’t matter where I am. The memories are there beside me. It will only be worse when we are in the other districts, staring at the people who loved the children I had a hand in killing.
“How long will you be gone?” he asks quietly.
“A few weeks.” I plunk a mug of coffee next to him. He curls his fingers around the warm cup and watches it grow cool while I silently finish my own breakfast. When I get up and rinse the crumbs off my plate, he makes no move to stand.
“Are you going to come to the bakery with me?” I ask.
“You’re going?” He looks genuinely surprised.
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, I guess. We just figured you might be…too busy.” He gives an uncomfortable shrug.
“Well, I am going. You should come, too.” Bruin looks older than he did when I left. He is only twenty, but he has a heaviness about him. Most of his face and the color of his dark blond hair comes from my mother, but he has the same mouth as my father. Somehow, it is always a bit surprising to see him open it. He is too young to stop going home altogether. There is really nowhere else for him to go.
I don’t say those words out loud, because I can see in his face that he’s already thinking them. He nods wearily and pulls on his coat.
The lights are on in Katniss’s house, making it stand out among the line of empty mansions in the Victor’s Village. It’s the only one with any life. The camera crews will be arriving in just a few hours, eager to provide the citizens of the Capitol with footage of their favorite star-crossed lovers. My stomach twinges. I haven’t had a real conversation with Katniss since the train home. I don’t really know if I have ever had a real conversation with her.
For months, I’ve tried not to think about her. I try not to even look at her when we pass in the street, as though not seeing her would do anything to lessen the pain. But that will have to change today.
Bruin watches me avert my eyes as we pass her house, but doesn’t comment.
At the bakery we enter through the front door like customers. It’s not time to open yet, so the storeroom is empty besides my mother. She looks up at the tinkling bell and sets her basket of steaming rolls on the counter.
Her eyes slide over me for a long moment. Ever since I got back, she’s done this–weigh every word before she speaks to me. Finally she gives a stiff nod. “It's good to see you, Peeta.”
Once she has satisfied her obligation to greet me, she turns to Bruin. “Get your apron on and get in the back. You think you can just come and go as you like, leaving all the work to your brother? Useless boy.” I wonder if she still bothers to punish him. Even she might be out of ideas at this point.
My apron is still on the hook on the wall, but I don’t reach for it.
My father must have heard the front door opening, because he appears in the doorway.
“Hi, dad,” I say. “I just wanted to say goodbye before I left.”
“I’m glad you came.” He tucks me into an awkward hug, keeping his flour-covered hands and forearms away from my expensive clothes.
When we break apart, I can tell they don’t know whether to get back to their long list of chores, or if they have to keep talking to me to be polite. I’ll only be gone a few weeks. It won’t be anything like last time. My mother picks up her basket and resumes filling the shelves.
“Maybe I’ll just come through and see Rommel, then I’ll let you get back to work,” I say.
“Are you hungry?” my father asks. “We just finished a batch of cheddar and chive biscuits.”
I hesitate before telling him I just had breakfast. Eating at home has become a bit of an uncomfortable subject now that I have more money than my parents. Even when I come for a family dinner, I can’t help feeling as though I should drop something in the cash register on the way out. I think my father would take my money, but I know better than to broach the subject with my mother. She’s never needed anyone in her life, and she wouldn't appreciate the implication that she might now.
“Hey, Peeta,” Rommel calls from the stove. “Did you see the icing on those cupcakes in the window? Not bad, huh? Bruin’s coming along.”
Bruin’s face flushes. He’s already slipped into his routine, shaping loaves from the piles of fresh dough my father has left out for him. Just like every morning. “I’m sure they look great,” I tell him. I had not seen his cupcakes, but I make a note to look on my way out. I offered to teach him some of my techniques when I told my family I wouldn't be working here anymore, but my mother’s cheeks went red and she told me victors don’t do volunteer work.
“I guess I will see you all in a few weeks,” I say, and duck back into the storeroom. Bruin’s cupcakes have clumpy bright yellow icing in uneven circles.
“Are you…”
I turn and see my father behind me. He looks like he is struggling to form the right words. Finally he gives a defeated sigh. “How is Katniss?”
“We don’t talk much,” I tell him.
He nods slowly and looks at his hands. “Have a good trip.”
“Thanks, dad.”
Snow threatens to fall during my walk back to Victor’s Village. The first half-hour or so after a snowfall is the only time District 12 is nice to look at. It doesn't take long for coal-covered boots to stain the streets back to their usual muddy gray. I would hold my breath as I watched snow fall from my window as a kid. It was almost a relief when enough people had passed through the square that the view was no longer perfect, because then I felt I could look away.
Victor’s Village has plenty of color with crisp flower beds and bright green shrubbery surrounding each house. There are even a few trees. But try as I might, I can’t appreciate them. It feels like a different world than the rest of the District, but not in a way that lets you breathe a sigh of relief. In a way that only makes the Capitol seem closer.
The dough I left to proof is ready for the oven when I get home. A few hours later, the loaf comes out a perfect golden brown, smelling like the sun itself. I wrap it in a cloth to protect it from the snow on the walk to Haymitch’s. Our teams will be here soon, and I don’t have much confidence that he knows what day of the week it is, let alone what time they are supposed to arrive. It looks like an empty shell of a house: dark, cold, and abandoned. I pull open the door and wince when the wave of rotting air hits me, choking out the smell of fresh-baked bread.
There is noise coming from the dining room. I freeze when I recognize Katniss’s voice. “I couldn’t shake you awake,” she is saying. It tugs me right back into the arena. I can feel her arms around me as she begged me to stay with her on the black-ice cornucopia. I can feel the ripping pain of realizing all of it was a lie. “Look, if you wanted to be babied, you should have asked Peeta.”
I step into the room. “Asked me what?”
They both look around, but I keep my eyes on Haymitch. I wasn’t expecting to have to face her yet. I haven’t figured out how to turn my mind off so I can keep the Capitol happy until they let me mercifully return to my little studio with no windows and the fire to keep me company.
I put the bread on the table and hold my hand out for the knife Haymitch is brandishing at Katniss. “Asked you to wake me without giving me pneumonia,” he says. Leave it to Katniss to wake someone by throwing ice water on them. It shouldn’t be an appealing trait, so why does it make me miss her?
With an eye on the grimy shirt he is using to wipe himself dry, I douse the knife in white liquor before using it to cut him a slice of bread.
I can’t keep my eyes from Katniss forever. I look up, and she is watching me with a resentful look on her face. I’m sure she wasn’t expecting me to be here either.
“Would you like a piece?”
“No, I ate at the Hob. But thank you.” She uses the same tone I did when I refused the biscuits at my parents’ bakery.
“You're welcome,” I say.
Haymitch tosses his shirt somewhere into the mess . “Brrr. You two have got a lot of warming up to do before showtime.”
I’m not worried about being unable to fool the Capitol audience. If anything, I wish I could be less convincing of my feelings for her. It would make my life so much less painful if I needed her even a little bit less.
And she has proven she can act when it comes down to it.
“Take a bath, Haymitch,” Katniss says. Then she swings herself back out the window and is gone.
“I don’t think much of your taste in women,” Haymitch says as he shoves half of the slice of bread into his mouth at once.
“Take a bath.”
I leave him chuckling as he reaches for a second bottle of liquor at his feet.